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Resources for Communication Problems

Monday, March 31, 2008

The general problem to be considered in this chapter may be called the problem of reference; that is, the relationship between words and things, and the role that our capacity for naming may play in man’s organization of cognition.

語言和認知

I.問題

在這個章節裡被考慮的總問題也許稱為參考的問題；也就是字和事之間的關係，和我們命名的能力在人認知的組織所扮演的角色。

That the capacity for naming has a biological dimension may be seen from the difficulties that animals experience in this respect. For instance, it is possible to train a hunting dog to “point,” and it may be quite possible to teach him to point to a specific set of objects in a specific environment upon appropriate command in a natural language. But it does not appear to be possible to teach a dog to do the “name-specific stimulus generalization” that every child does automatically. The hound who has learned to “point to the tree, the gate, the house” in the trainer’s yard will perform quite erratically when given the same command with respect to similar but physically different object in an unfamiliar environment. The correctness of the animal’s responses may even vary with such extralinguistic cues as the geographical position, posture, and bodily movements of his master, the time of day, or the clothes that people are wearing while he is being exercised. There is no convincing evidence that any animal below man has ever learned to that word in common language-usage. So-called proof to the contrary always lacks proper controls on interpretation. For instance, there is a report on a parrot who could say good-by (in German) and who supposedly knew what this word meant or when it is properly used. Once the bird was also heard to say good-by upon the arrival of some friends of the family; the proud owner judged this to be a sign that his pet did not merely know the meaning of the word but was even using it to produce a desired effect: to send the just-arrived friends away, presumably because he had taken a dislike to them.

It may be well to stress once more that our concern is with the capacity for (natural, human) language which, ordinarily, leads to the understanding of a definably structured type of utterance; or, in other words, with knowing a language. The infant who has a repertoire of three tricks (wave by-by, show me your tongue, show me how tall you are) which he can perform upon the appropriate commands but who can understand no other sentence of the same grammatical, structural type has not yet begun to acquire language. The essence of language is its productivity; in the realm of perception and understanding of sentences, it is the capacity to recognize structural similarities between familiar and entirely novel word patterns. Thus our criterion for knowing language is not dependent upon demonstrations that an individual can talk or that he goes through some stereotyped performance upon hearing certain words, but upon evidence that he can analyze novel utterances through the application of structural principles. It is the purpose of this chapter to show that the understanding of the word-object relationship, the learning and acquisition of reference, is also dependent upon certain cognitive, analytic skills, much the way understanding sentence is. The problem of reference cannot be discussed without simultaneous considerations of the relationship between language and cognition.

Evidence for understanding language may be supplied by different kinds of response. It is not necessary that the subject has the anatomical and physiological prerequisites for actual speech production. In the case of man, we may cite children who have learned to understand language but who cannot speak; compare this to children who have the anatomical equipment for speech production but whose cognitive apparatus is so poorly developed that only the primordial for language are detectable but not fullfledged comprehension. In the case of animals, we have birds who can talk but who give no evidence of language understanding and we have famous case of Clever Hans, the horse, who had a nonacoustic response repertoire (stamping of hoofs) that, unfortunately, gave the erroneous impression of a coding system for the German language. Had the horse actually had the cognitive capacity for acquiring a natural language, his motor response limitations would have been no obstacle to his giving evidence for language comprehension. A similar argument could be made for the physical nature of the input data. Language acquisition is not dependent in man upon processing of acoustic patterns. There are many instances today of Deaf-and blind people who have built up language capacities on tactually perceived stimulus configuration.

A comparison of language in retarded children with language development of normal children indicates that there is a “natural language-learning strategy” that cannot be altered by training programs. Language unfolds lawfully and in regular stages. Language progress in the retarded appears to be primarily controlled by their biological maturation and their development of organizational principles rather than intelligent insight. The pathologically lowered IQ of the retarded does not result in bizarre use of language but merely in “frozen” but normal primitive language stages.

A remarkable degree of language competence is achieved by the congenitally deaf, despite apparently overwhelming handicaps. Thus, language may still develop under very abnormal conditions. The specific teaching of grammatical rules (no matter whether they are old-fashioned ones or modern) does not appear to help the children substantially in their language development. There is no reason to doubt that their language proficiency would develop in the same manner as it develops in the hearing who are simply given a great number of grammatical (and often semigrammatical) sentences from which they abstract the structural principles by which they themselves begin then to form new sentences. Deaf children could hardly differ in the capacity for doing this from hearing children, provided they were given enough examples and are allowed to go through a natural order of grammatical development. We do not know how hearing children develop their ability to abstract structural principles, and we do not know how deaf children might do it. But this is no reason to try to instill language habits by means (teaching of grammatical rules) which have never been shown to be of any use for any other language-learning child.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Two large bulges, one left and one right , on the ventral surface of the medulla; they contain the pyramidal tracts, which carry signals for voluntary movement from the cerebral hemispheres to motor circuits of thee spinal cord.

兩個大突起，一個在左一個在右，位於中腦的複測表面。他們包含了錐體徑—攜帶從大腦半球到脊髓運動細胞的自體運動訊號。

相關查詢

錐狀體由大腦而來之神經纖維,經過脊髓至前角運動細胞

CA107R18

Red nuclei紅核

A pair of tegmental nuclei, one on the left and one on their right; they have a pinkish appearance and are important structures of the sensorimotor system.

一對被蓋核體，一個在左一個在右，粉紅色的外觀並且是感覺運動系統的重要組織。

相關查詢

紅核在中腦,接受大腦皮質運動區及對側小腦之訊息

CA107R19

Preoptic area 視神經交叉區域

The most anterior area of the hypothalamus, which is composed on each side of the brain of lateral and medial preoptic areas; it plays a role in sexual behavior.

下視丘最前側區塊，由各面側向和中間視神經交叉腦部區域組成，控制性行為。

CA107R20

Reticular formation網狀構造組織

A complex network of nuclei and short interconnecting tracts that is located in the core of the brain stem, from the medulla to the midbrain; its various nuclei play a role in controlling numerous vital body functions and in the promotion of arousal, attention, and sleep.

One of the two pairs of hypothalamic nuclei that contain neurons whose axons terminate in the posterior pituitary; this pair is located above the optic chiasm, just posterior to the Suprachiasmatic nuclei.

The two-lobed diencephalic structure at the top of the brain stem, one lobe on each side of the third ventricle; several of its nuclei relay sensory information to the appropriate regions of the cerebral cortex.

The pair of hypothalamic nuclei, one on the left and one on the right, that plays a role in regulating the conversion of blood glucose to body fat; they are located near the midline in the ventral part of the hypothalamus.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

LBT291-294子倫

III.Evolvement of language in the healthy child291

Grammatical understanding cannot always be explained simply by looking at the immediately underlying phrase-makers, but two semantic interpretations are possible in the presence of one and the same phrase-makers. In most cases, there are much more intricate relationships. Chomsky has demonstrated this by the ambiguous phrase.

where the ambiguity cannot be explained through an option of analysis in terms of either of two possible. But different phrase-makers, but two semantic interpretations are possible in the presence of one and the same phrase-maker. There is, then, something even more abstract which differentiates the meanings of this phrase. One interpretation is related to the sentence

Each of these latter sentences has a distinct phrase-maker. Each of these sentences (that is, one that has either of these grammatical structures) may be cast into a different grammatical form, namely a gerundial phrase. More succinctly stated: the first phrase “the shooting of the hunters,” may be interpreted in either of two ways is that speakers of the language see grammatical relatedness to two semantically very different sentences. The fact that all speakers immediately see these relationships clearly indicates that this must be based on some underlying grammatical principle by which one grammatical structure, that is, one type of phrase-marker, may be related to another .We have illustrated a universal principle of grammatical knowledge or understanding: there must be lawful ways in which certain types of structure may be related to other types of structure. The grammatical laws that control these relations have come to be called transformations.

FIG.7.6. Structural interpretations have varying levels of depth. Semantic interpretation is another level. (The diagram is not meant to convey any depth-ordering between semantic and structural interpretations.)

Transformations are statements of grammatical as well as semantic and phonological connections.

In Fig. 7.6 are diagrammed varying levels of ambiguity. In Fig. 7.6a the ambiguity may be resolved by direct reference to immediate phrase-markers that may underly the sentence, whereas in Fig. 7.6b there is only one phrase-marker-interpretation possible, and therefore there is a still deeper level on which the ambiguity must be resolved.

Another prominent feature in the understanding of sentences is the ubiquitous possibility of seeing relationships and various types of affinities between sentences that have very different types of structure and are also phonetically and lexically different from one another. This is diagrammed in Fig. 7.6c, and an example is the passive transformation. Apparently, grammatical structures constitute intricate networks of transformational interrelations and complex systems of overlapping syntactic categories containing similarly functioning elements or sets of elements.

In the absence of systematic research on children’s understanding of adult sentences, and hence of their developing “analytic equipment” for syntax, we can only make educated guesses at how grammar actually develops. The study of adult syntax makes it clear that discourse could not be understood, and that no interpretable utterances could be produced, without syntactic development pari passu with lexical and phonological development. Syntax is the calculus, so to speak, of functional categories, and the categories are arranged hierarchically from the all-inclusive to the particular.

The child whose language consists of nothing but single word utterances has obviously a more primitive syntactic understructure than the mature speaker. Syntactic categorization is the speaker’s act of super-imposing structure; he assigns given lexical items to parts of speech. The child’s syntax is primitive because all of his words have the same syntactic function: they may be used as a self-sufficient utterance. There is just one undifferentiated syntactic category, and any word heard or produced is assigned to it. If we wish to introduce Chomskian notation already at this primitive stage. We might use the equation or rewriting instruction as he calls it, S→ｗ, which reads in this grammar a sentence S is formed by the use of any word that belongs to the classｗ, and all of the child’s words do belong to it.

Notice that it would make no sense to ask whether the child, at this stage, knows more adjectives than nouns or whether he has any verbs. Strictly speaking, adjectives, nouns, verbs are modes of functioning, given a complex syntax. But since the syntactic conditions for such functioning are not yet present, we cannot ask whether the infant has verbs. We do not ask whether a fertilized human egg thinks or what the social order among chicks is before they have hatched.

The joining of two words in a single utterance is a sign that the initial global category, labeledｗ, is splitting up into two functionally distinct categories. The following example , collected from Braine (1963), Brown and Fraser (1963), Brown and Bellugi (1964), and Ervin (1964), show that the two words are not random concatenations but that a functional distinction is emerging.

“find it”“here sock”“more milk”

“fix it”“here allgone”“more nut”

“drink it”“here is”“more up”

etc.etc.etc.

A paradigm is clearly being formed.

兩個單詞的結合是一個象徵表示最初的全球種類，稱為W，分割成兩個功能不同的種類。以下有舉例，是從1963年Braine，Brown and Fraser，1964年Brown and Bellugi，還有Ervin等人所收集而來的，顯示了兩個單詞間不是隨機連鎖的而是出現一種用功能性的差異來做區別的句法。

“find it”“here sock”“more milk”

“fix it”“here allgone”“more nut”

“drink it”“here is”“more up”

etc.etc.etc.

一個詞型的變化正清楚的在形成中。

One of the two words has a higher frequency of occurrence and seems to be a grammatical functor, whereas the other word appears to come from a large pool of lexical items with a great variety of meanings. Braine (1963) has called the functor words the pivot of these two-word sentences. The entire utterance seems to “turn around them.”

It is not always easy to recognize the pivot of the two-word utterances, and we cannot always be sure how to characterize the sentences formally. For instance, “mommy sandwich,” “baby highchair,’ ‘throw daddy,” “pick glove” are all quite typical productions. At present, there are no reliable procedures to demonstrate that the two elements of these sentences belong to two different syntactic categories, although such an assumption is not unreasonable. We may have the primitive subject-predicate distinction.

The structure of these second-stage sentences might be characterized formally by diagrams such as these:

294Primitive stages in language development

By the time he uses three-word sentences, further differentiations of categories have taken place. We now find utterances such as these:

“fix a Lassie”“my horsie stuck”

“here two sock”“poor Kitty there”

“more nice milk”“that little one”

At this stage, many types of utterances are heard, and it becomes increasingly difficult to describe the child’s syntactic skills by an exhaustive catalogue of phrase-markers. Instead we endeavor to discover the principles by which these structures are recognized and produced.

The last examples cited illustrate,however, the progressive differentiation of syntactic categories. The structure of these sentences may be characterized by postulating a splitting of the earlier category ｗinto two, namely a modifier m and a noun N. A tree diagram might look like the following:

Monday, March 17, 2008

CA204R11.4

撰寫人：4754 永恆

Below in alphabetical order is a list of all the terms and definitions that you learned in Chapter 11. Cover the definitions with a sheet of paper, and word your way down the list of terms, defining them to yourself as you go. Repeat this process until you have gone through the list twice without an error. Then, cover the terms and word your way down the list of definitions, providing the correct terms as you go. Repeat this second process until you have gone through the list twice without an error.

CA204R01

Amygdala杏仁核

The almond-shaped limbic nucleus that is located in the medial temporal lobe just anterior to the hippocampus; it is thought to link feelings of fear and anxiety to appropriate stimuli and defensive responses.

撰寫人：4856 海琪

CA205R11

Paraventricular nucleus

腦室旁核

A nucleus in the dorsal medial region of the hypothalamus just above the dorsomedial nucleus; bilateral lesions to this nucleus or to the fibers that project to it through the ventromedial hypothalamus produce overeating and obesity.

CA205R14

Raphé nuclei

縫核

The vertical sheet of serotonergic nuclei that runs along the midline of the reticular formation; electrical stimulation of some the raphé nuclei can elicit defensive responses and many of its neurons are active during SWS.

CA205R21

Ventromedial nucleus

腹內側核

The major nucleus of the ventral medial region of the hypothalamus; large bilateral lesions of this nucleus produce overeating and obesity by promoting the conversion of blood glucose to body fat; it also plays a role in female copulatory behavior.